Theories of Subtitling Theoretical Review

order that have a particular meaning that is different from the meanings of each word understood on its own. Shortly, the meaning of the idiomatic expression is not amount of the words taken individually and literally. Baker 1992:63-65 argues that idioms, fixed expressions and proverbs are frozen patterns of language which allow little or no variation in form and, in the case of idioms, they often carry meanings which cannot be deduced from their individual components. Unlike idioms, however, fixed expressions and proverbs often have fairly transparent meanings. The meaning of a proverb can easily be deduced from the meanings of the words which constitute it. According to Larson 1984:115, idiom is one class of figurative expressions which occurs in all languages but which is very language specific. Furthermore, Falk 1973:36 says that idiomatic expression is any string of words for which the meaning of the whole expression cannot be determined from the meanings of individual formatives that make up the string. Lim 2004: i says that generally speaking, idioms consist of the following six types: 1. Phrasal verbs, as in call on, put off, do away with. 2. Prepositional phrases, as in in a nutshell, from time to time, with a view to. 3. Idioms with verbs as key words, as in come in handy, fight shy of, leave much to be desired. 4. Idioms with nouns as key words, as in a blessing disguise, child’s play, food for thought. 5. Idioms with adjective as key words, as in cold comfort, wishful thinking, sailing plan. 6. Idiomatic pairs, as in safe and sound, aches ad pains, sink or swim. Fernando 1996:3 proposes features of idioms based on compositeness, institutionalization, and semantic opacity as presented below. 1. Compositeness Idiom is commonly accepted as a type of multiword expression. 2. Institutionalization Idioms are conventionalized expressions, conventionalization being the end result of initially ad hoc expressions. 3. Semantic opacity The meaning of an idiom is not the sum of its constituents. In other words, an idiom is often non literal. Idiom can be distinguished under two main headings: ambiguity and semantic peculiarities. The ambiguity occurs since the most idioms are formed from morphemes which are also used non-idiomatically, they may have either a literal or an idiomatic meaning. Moreover, idioms also have specific syntactic properties. Idiomatic expression even does not permit the use of corresponding passive alternative. Also, a general rule of idiom is that none of the words of an idiomatic expression may be substituted by synonyms or simply omitted. In other words, an idiom is a fixed expression which has its own meaning. Baker 1992:63 also proposes syntactic restrictions of idioms. She says that unless she is counciously making a joke or attempting a play on words, a speaker or writer cannot normally do any of the following with an idiom: 1. change the order of words in it 2. delete a word from it 3. add a word to it 4. replace a word with another 5. change its grammatical structure Idiomatic expressions occur not only in English, but in Bahasa Indonesia also. Chaer 1995:74 explains idioms as linguistic units of which meaning cannot be predicted from the lexical meanings of their elements of the grammatical meaning of the units. The forms of idioms in Bahasa Indonesia can be in word, phrase, or sentence. Chaer 1995:75 further categorizes idiom into two kinds, full idiom and partial idiom. Full idiom is idiom of which elements on the whole merge into unity and has one single meaning. Each element looses its lexical meaning. The example of full idiom is an idiomatic expression menjual gigi. It has lexical meaning to sell the tooth in English. However, this idiom means tertawa keras which has literal meaning to laugh loudly in English. Meanwhile, in partial idiom, part of the elements still has its own lexical meaning. On the other words, some of the words have their literal meaning while in others have peculiar meanings to particular pattern. The example of partial idiom is daftar hitam. The word daftar has lexical meaning the list in English, but hitam which literally means black in this case does not refer to the strict color term. Thus, daftar hitam can be literally translated as the list containing the names of people accused to do wrong. Veisbergs 1999:171 also proposes techniques of translating idiom- based wordplay including the followings. 1. Equivalent idiom transformation It is a technique of translating idioms into idioms which are formally and semantically equivalent, both as units and on the level of their components. 2. Loan translation It is a technique of translating idioms by means of literal translation. 3. Extension This technique involves extending the translation of the transformed idiom by inserting some additional explanatory information. 4. Analogue idiom transformation This technique involves using similar expression an analogue idiom which is formally different but semantically and stylistically close to source-text idiom. 5. Substitution This technique involves replacing an idiom with a totally different image. 6. Compensation